Mamma Mia! is a jukebox musical romantic comedy that runs 108 minutes and asks one question over and over: which of three men is Sophie Sheridan’s father? Directed by Phyllida Lloyd from a screenplay by Catherine Johnson, the film opened in the United Kingdom on July 10, 2008, and in the United States on July 18, distributed by Universal Pictures. It grossed $706.4 million worldwide against a $52 million budget, making it the fifth highest-grossing film of 2008. It also holds a critical score of 5.1 out of 10. Both of those numbers are true at once, and that tension is the whole story of this movie.
Trailer, via Screen Bites.
Sophie Sheridan and the Three Invitations
Sophie, played by Amanda Seyfried, is a 20-year-old bride-to-be living with her single mother on the fictional Greek island of Kalokairi. She reveals to her bridesmaids that she has secretly invited three men to her wedding without telling her mother, Donna, played by Meryl Streep. The three are Sam Carmichael, an Irish-American architect played by Pierce Brosnan; Bill Anderson, a Swedish travel writer and sailor played by Stellan Skarsgård; and Harry Bright, a British banker played by Colin Firth. One of them is her biological father. She does not know which. She wants him to walk her down the aisle.
The premise is a machine, and it works the way a machine works. Three men arrive. Sophie hides them in the goat house and gets them to agree to stay hidden as a surprise. Donna spots them anyway. She is dumbfounded to find herself facing her former lovers and demands they leave. Then she confides in her old friends Tanya and Rosie, played by Christine Baranski and Julie Walters, that she genuinely does not know which of the three fathered Sophie.
That confession is the film’s best idea. Donna is not hiding a secret from Sophie. She does not have the secret. The film keeps the question open because its heroine cannot close it, and that is more interesting than the tidy version would have been.
A Boat, a Bachelorette Party, and a Villa
Sophie finds the men aboard Bill’s sailboat, and they sail around Kalokairi. The men bond with her and tell her stories of Donna’s carefree youth. Sophie tries to tell her fiancé Sky, played by Dominic Cooper, about her ploy, and loses her nerve. At her bachelorette party, Donna is distressed by the three men’s presence. Rosie and Tanya assure her they will take care of them.
Sophie then talks with each man alone. Bill learns that Donna got the money for her villa from his great-aunt Sofia, when he had understood the money was left “to family.” On that basis they decide he is her father, and she asks him to give her away while keeping the secret until the wedding.
Everything here is built to deliver the next song. The plot does not resolve so much as it clears space. That is not a flaw in a jukebox musical. It is the assignment. The question is whether the film does anything with the space it clears.
The Cast, Ranked by What They’re Asked to Do
The ensemble is the film’s strongest asset, and the roles are not equally sized. Streep carries the emotional weight. Seyfried carries the plot. Brosnan, Firth and Skarsgård split the premise three ways and each gets a lane. Baranski and Walters get the comedy. Cooper gets the least to do of anyone in the main cast, which is a real cost, because Sky is the one person on the island with no secret.
| Character | Actor | Function in the story |
|---|---|---|
| Donna Sheridan | Meryl Streep | Sophie’s mother; does not know which man is the father |
| Sophie Sheridan | Amanda Seyfried | The bride; invited all three men without telling Donna |
| Sam Carmichael | Pierce Brosnan | Irish-American architect; possible father |
| Bill Anderson | Stellan Skarsgård | Swedish travel writer and sailor; possible father |
| Harry Bright | Colin Firth | British banker; possible father |
| Tanya Chesham-Leigh | Christine Baranski | Donna’s former bandmate; rich three-time divorcée |
| Rosie Mulligan | Julie Walters | Donna’s other former bandmate; unmarried author |
| Sky Rymand | Dominic Cooper | Sophie’s fiancé; designing a website for the hotel |
Look at that table and you see the design. Three men occupy one column. Two women occupy another. The groom sits alone at the bottom. The film knows exactly where its energy is and spends it accordingly.
Skopelos, ABBA, and the Score
Principal photography took place mainly on the Greek island of Skopelos from August to September 2007. ABBA members Benny Andersson and Björn Ulvaeus composed the film’s score. Andersson appears uncredited as the piano player during “Dancing Queen.” Ulvaeus appears uncredited as a Greek god.
Those two cameos tell you what the film thinks of itself. It is not embarrassed by its source. It puts the songwriters on screen and lets the audience point at them. The film premiered at Leicester Square in London on June 30, 2008. It is promoted as Mamma Mia! The Movie, which is a strange thing to put on a poster and a fair description of what you get.
What $706.4 Million Actually Proves
Mamma Mia! received mixed reviews from critics. It grossed $706.4 million worldwide on a $52 million budget. It became the fifth highest-grossing film of 2008. A sequel, Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again, followed on July 20, 2018, with much of the cast returning.
The box office is not evidence that the film is good. It is evidence that the film is wanted. Those are different claims, and this paper will not blur them. What the gross proves is that a musical built on ABBA songs, set on a Greek island, with a wedding at the end, found an audience that critics did not represent and did not care to. That audience was right about one thing: the film delivers exactly what its tagline promises. “A mother. A daughter. Three possible fathers. A trip down the aisle you’ll never forget.”
Where the Film Actually Stands
Here is the verdict, and it is not the box office’s verdict.
Mamma Mia! is a 108-minute film with a 108-minute premise. The three-father question is a good hook and a weak engine, because the film never lets the question cost anyone anything. Donna is distressed. Sophie is nervous. Nobody is ruined. The stakes stay at the level of a party invitation, and the songs carry the rest.
The performances are the reason to watch. Streep does the work the script does not do for her. Baranski and Walters are the only people on screen who seem to know they are in a comedy, and the film is better every time they are in frame. Seyfried holds the center without much help. Brosnan, Firth and Skarsgård are asked to be three versions of the same regret, and they are.
The direction is functional. Lloyd keeps the camera moving and the island bright, and she does not get in the way of the songs. That is a real skill and a modest one. The film never finds a visual idea as strong as its premise, which is why the premise has to keep restating itself.
The score is the score. Andersson and Ulvaeus wrote these songs decades earlier and they have not stopped working. The film’s job was to not break them, and it does not break them.
So what is the 5.1 out of 10 measuring? It is measuring the gap between how good this film is and how good it is to watch with a room full of people who already know the words. That gap is enormous, and it is the most interesting thing about Mamma Mia!. As a piece of filmmaking it is thin, repetitive and content to hit its marks. As an event it is nearly unstoppable. The critics who gave it mixed reviews were reviewing the first thing. The audience that handed it $706.4 million was buying the second.
The sequel arrived on July 20, 2018, ten years after the original, with much of the cast returning. That tells you which of those two readings the industry believed. This paper believes the industry was right about the business and wrong about the art, and that both of those can be true of the same movie.
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